January 29, 2009

I did not cry when my grandpa died. I did not cry when my aunt died. I did not cry when my friend was murdered.

I did cry, sobbing like a little boy, when my dog was hit by a car and killed.

How messed up is that? Is there something wrong with me? The day my grandpa died a bunch of relatives came over to his house to grieve and do such things together. I was living in my grandpa’s camper that year of my life. My father had moved across the state to Seattle for a better job. My brother, mother and myself all lived in grandpa’s camper which was parked in his yard. Less than two weeks prior to his death my grandfather had been complaining of severe hip pain for at least six months but the doctors could not find anything wrong with him. Then, they found it. He had lung cancer which had spread throughout his body and into his bones, hence the hip pain. The doctors said he had months to live. Less than two weeks after he was diagnosed with cancer, he passed away. I will talk more about him at a later date. Back to the day he passed and the family gathering at his house. He had a small house and it was completely full of people. Some were quiet, solemn. Some were crying and hugging each other. Some were laughing and sharing stories and memories. I was outside, sitting on the porch of his huge garage, which was a separate building directly behind his house. My uncle came out the back door and walked straight for me. I was spending most of my time outside because I did not feel comfortable in a room full of sad people. I stood up as he approached me and he hugged me and put his hands on my shoulders. He told me it’s okay to cry and asked if I had cried yet and that nobody inside had seen me cry. I was disturbed and annoyed that anyone was even paying attention to whether or not I cried. Who the hell’s business was it but mine? Why were they intruding on my personal space like that? I wanted to walk away but he had ahold of me by the shoulders.

I simply replied “no…”.

He got upset with me and shook me and asked what was wrong with me and why I was not crying? I could not find an answer for him. I just stood there being shaken and feeling extremely annoyed by the whole situation. I could not answer him that day and I still can’t today. I don’t know why I did not cry for my grandpa, who I was pretty close to. He was a WWII vet so he had lots of cool stories, knew every card game there was and he was a really good human being. Everyone loved him. Why did I cry over my dog and not for my relatives and friend? That was a bad year. A couple deaths in the family and bad luck happening to me all year long. My friend who I was secretly in love with got pregnant by another guy, her boyfriend. My best friend who had Type II diabetes was getting worse even at his young age. My other very good friend moved four or five states away. My $400.00 bmx bike which was a birthday present got stolen three months after I got it. My cousin built me a new bmx bike out of spare parts and it got stolen a month after she gave it to me. I got ripped off by a guy who I thought was a friend. Back then I smoked marijuana sometimes and my dealer was all out so I called my friend. He met me outside the grocery store and told me his dealer did not like new people so he would go get it and be right back. He never came back and when I called his house his sister said he was not home. I did not believe her. I called back and altered my voice a bit and told her I was Titan, my so called “friend” ‘s best friend. The son of a b*tch answered the phone and I confronted him. He staggered out some lame excuse and hung up the phone. He avoided me the rest of the year. Even though it was only over $40, the fact he would do that to me when we had hung out so many times really pissed me off. Why would you do that to someone you know? To someone you kicked it with quite a bit? Someone you had gone to school with for 10 years? I just didn’t get it. I still don’t. Back to my damn bikes, a year later I found out both of them were stolen by my friend. Someone I had spent many nights sleeping over at his place throughout our childhood, someone I skipped a lot of classes with. What the hell? He stole them and sold off the individual parts. I have never seen or talked to him again. That was 10 or 11 years ago.

Am I weird because I didn’t cry when they died? Is there something wrong with me because I cried my eyes out like a little baby when my freakin dog died?

January 28, 2009

Some punches hurt more than others.

First off, in keeping with being anonymous I have changed real names in this post and used planets instead *shrugs*.

I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately. I don’t trust women sometimes and I think it’s because of a combination of events throughout my life. But, one even that keeps popping up over and over again in my thoughts is Jupiter [celebrity last name] and yes she is related to the movie star, they are cousins. Jupiter is someone who I thought was my friend. We talked a lot, hung out sometimes (lived two hours apart) and played a ton of chess together (every day or two) via a popular chat/messenger program.

I thought she was a friend.

I told her about something that happened to me that I have never told anyone else, no one, not one single other living soul on this entire planet. For whatever reason I trusted her with this information and her response was flippant and basically a shrug of the shoulders. The fact she did not seem to care, one way or the other, probably should have been a clue she was not someone I could confide in but I didn’t listen to my intuition and opened up to her anyways. Six or seven years later and I still harbor some ill will towards her. Of course I don’t mean violence, but mostly disappointment, a little anger and some betrayal.

I will try to talk about this in as short a version as possible so all the details won’t be there but you will know enough to understand what I am talking about at least. Several months after I opened up to her it was like she fell off the face of the Earth. One day she just stopped talking to me, didn’t answer her phone, didn’t answer her email, didn’t sign into messenger anymore (I later found out she had put me on block/ignore), absolutely nothing. Over the next month I tried to call her a few times and I sent a few emails but it was blatantly obvious she did not want to talk to me and I had no clue why. Neither Neptune, Pluto or Mars (my ex girlfriend and two of her friends) had any clue what was going on either, they did not know why she wasn’t talking to me and in fact had not had as much contact with her either but absolutely nothing like what she was doing to me. They all had no clue why Jupiter had seemingly decided I don’t exist. It was obvious she wanted nothing to do with me, I just wished she would tell me why so I did not have to wonder WTF I did wrong.

About six or seven months later I was walking to school in downtown Seattle when we bumped into each other on the sidewalk. She tried to keep on going without even acknowledging that she looked directly at me and without a doubt saw me. I turned and asked her to stop for just a minute. She stopped and turned around and I asked a very simple question.

I asked ” Why? “.

She rolled her eyes and shifted her weight and said loud enough for everyone within a 1 block radius to hear:

“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to know you. I don’t need anymore friends in my life. I was only nice to you because you were dating my friend, that’s over now, so F*CK OFF!”.

Then, she walked away to the chorus of “Ohhh’s”, “ahhh’s” and laughter coming from the Metro bus stop we happened to be standing next to. I think I might have even heard an “Oh snap!” in there somewhere.

I have not seen or heard from her since.

As humiliating as the laughter and staring was, I did not really pay attention to it, or care. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach with a sledge hammer or kicked in the balls by a chic with pointed, steel-toed cowboy boots (if such a thing exists). I literally felt sick and ill to my stomach and utterly baffled and caught off-guard. I was shocked and confused how someone I trusted and thought was a true friend could in the blink of an eye rip me apart and toss me aside. At the time I thought she must be an evil bitch or mentally unstable or something because she showed me both Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hide. A few weeks later I was talking to Mars and she told me she did not know why Jupiter treated me like that but she did enlighten me to not take it personal as she knew something I did not. She told me that Jupiter had become extremely jaded towards anyone born with a penis. But, I could not help but take it personal and all these years later I still feel some hurt over it.

It also did not help that I had a pretty big “crush” on her for like a year before all this first happened. I hate the word “crush” but I don’t know what else to call it. I would not say I was in secretly in love with her but I did have a lot of feelings for her and I was never able to tell her how I felt about her. This is a common throughout my life. Jupiter was not the first girl I could not express my feelings to and she wasn’t the last. Of course also I was with Neptune for most of that time so I would have never acted on it anyways. My feelings and desire may have wandered a bit but I am not a cheater and never have been. Yes, the thought of acting on my wants had crossed my mind a few times but out of respect for Neptune I never even really considered it. On our one year anniversary Neptune left me. It was without warning and I had no clue she was even considering it. Clueless seems to be a common weave throughout my life.

Some girls have even called me “Mr. Oblivious” before.

After Neptune left the thought of hitting on Jupiter did rattle around in my mind a few times, but she was my friend (or so I thought) and I did not want to screw up that friendship so I did not go for it. Little did I know how completely and utterly misguided my feelings for Jupiter were. But anyways, Jupiter hurt, it really did. It blind sided me and to this day is probably the most brutal thing anyone has ever said to me face-to-face.

Okay, back to Mars, she told me in the six months leading up to this Jupiter had done a complete 180 switch. She had gone from an adorably cute, funny, full of life young woman to a jaded, man hating lesbian. Apparently her boyfriend, who Jupiter and I talked about frequently as Jupiter confided in me when she was going through tough times, had gone through a big messy departure from each other over events Jupiter never told me about. Jupiter and Mars were best friends, so Mars had info I never did. Jupiter had finally caved in and had sex with her boyfriend, losing her virginity. As fate would have it, the first and up to that point, the only time she had sex she got knocked up. She told her boyfriend she was pregnant and he dumped her and walked away from her. She must have snapped mentally as she both starved herself for weeks and attempted to use a clothes hanger as some sort of insane attempt to give herself an abortion. Not only did she lose the baby, but the doctors told her she had damaged her ability to have children in the future. Jupiter’s father was/is verbally and emotionally abusive towards her. We talked about her father a lot, she never told me about him touching her physically other than grabbing her by the arm or something but she often spoke of his verbal and emotional abuse. I think Jupiter must have been terrified of her father finding out she was pregnant at 16 years old. Mars then told me that she is now exclusively a lesbian and a jaded one at that. I knew she was bi-sexual but she had apparently had enough of men.

I understand she was screwed over by a couple of the guys in her life but if she treated me the way she did simply because my reproductive organs are on the outside instead of the inside, well, that is f*cked up in my opinion. I offered her nothing but my friendship and kindness and I honestly still feel upset over the way our “friendship” ended. I don’t know what I expected from her, I guess I just didn’t expect her to be that cold to me. She sucker punched me and I did hurt pretty badly over that for quite awhile. Having someone who I thought was close to me, turn on me like that, really screwed with me emotionally and mentally a little and even sitting here talking about it makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Sometimes I feel like Melvin Smiley, where his character could not stand the thought of anyone not liking him, I can’t stand the thought of people I know not liking me. I could not care less about strangers though.

Anyways, someone I cared about turning on me still has me second guessing women and their intentions sometimes. I am apprehensive about letting them get close… and in recent years have walked the other way when I felt myself starting to get emotionally attached. I get out while I can. I don’t want to, but I do it anyways.